Tag: HomeSense

Skulls aren’t just for Halloween!

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Skulls are an integral part of Halloween decorations. Of course pumpkins are the main feature associated with Halloween, but with the date being celebrated with horror and gore, dead bodies and bones are also part and parcel of many films, parties and dsplays.

We don’t decorate our home for Halloween anymore. We used to, in the early days of living in the flat. We’d have small Halloween parties which would usually end in absolute carnage, and I used to love buying fake cobwebs, spiders, skeletons and the like.

I’d hoped, when we moved to our house, that we’d get Trick or Treaters. But we’re tucked away in a hidden corner of a quiet cul de sac with no passing traffic, so my dream of doling out sweets to cute little kids was not to be!

Because of that, and the fact we no longer have parties (I don’t think our livers could take it!) I don’t bother with decorating the house for Halloween anymore. I don’t even bother with pumpkins – they’re just so messy.

I do sometimes cook something Halloween themed – you can see my recipe for eyeball meatballs here.

But skulls, on the other hand, are part of our every day decor! The husband loves skull imagery; it’s very prevalent on the rock scene, and the biking scene too. He has loads of t-shirts with skulls on, mugs, hoodies and jewellery.

Here’s a couple of examples that are in our house all day every day – not just for Halloween!

This skull print was a gift the husband received for Christmas last year. It sits perfectly on his record player cabinet, and conveniently hides the door to the meter cupboard too!

Outside, another of the husband’s gifts, this time from his birthday. This isn’t really a threat to anyone, as it’s on the inside fence of our back garden. We can see it from the lounge and it always makes me smile!

The latest addition is this glass skull from Homesense. It’s hollow with a sprayed enamel finish and I bought it with the intention of filling it with fairy lights and using it as a lamp. It doesn’t throw out a lot of light due to the enamel coating, but it does look very cool! We haven’t found a permanent home for it yet, but it will definitely be around all year through.

I know we have other stuff that we still haven’t unpacked from the move, including skull ornaments and a Salvador Dali print. It’s fair to say it’s a metaphorical and literal pattern in our home!

Do you have any particular themes in your home? Or keep occasion decorations up year round? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks, as always, for reading. x

A perfect summer’s day

Hey! I’m back from my week in Greece, more on that later in another post. It was so nice to land on Sunday afternoon and be met by warm sunny weather, rather than the usual shock to the system when you’ve been in warmer climes. Even better was having an extra day off in the form of Bank Holiday Monday to soften the blow of being home, and yesterday was gorgeously warm and sunny in Birmingham. Yesterday was everything that every weekend was supposed to be in summertime, but has mainly failed miserably due to our rubbish British weather.

I had a lazy start to the day, a leisurely walk to the shops for breakfast supplies, and ate a sausage and mushroom sandwich. Then I pottered around in my garden, trimming bushes and hedges, pruning my overgrown climbing roses, watering all my plants that were thirsty after a week with no love or rain, and repotting rose bushes and french lavender to give them more space to grow.

It’s been so long since I’ve been able to spend any length of time out there because of the rain and general non-summeriness. I’ve probably not had a proper potter since the beginning of July. I was in my element; it’s exactly how I hoped to be spending my summer days. In truth I’d written off any chance of it happening as summer draws to a close (boooooo) but it was great to have a last hurrah.

Sunglasses in the garden

I’ve loved populating my green space with pretty stuff. These ornamental ladders came via a well timed trip to HomeSense, after I’d spotted similar on Pinterest.

Ornamental ladders

I’ve stacked them with pretty lanterns and solar lights from Poundland; they have such lovely garden bits and pieces.

Garden ornaments

These lightbulb shape multi-coloured solar lights were last year’s Poundland, from the Charlie Dimmock garden range (there’s also a blue and yellow one hidden from view)

Solar lightbulbs

These are my favourite garden ornaments though; Easter Island head planters from B&Q with blue grass “hair”. We call them Bert and Ernie (Bert is on the left with the emo sweepy hair and Ernie has the big forehead!)


In the evening we ate Chinese takeaway in the last of the sun and then watched the last two episodes of Game of Thrones season 7, catching up on the one we missed last week while we were away, and yesterday’s season finale. No spoilers, but I was slightly disappointed; previous seasons have led to big expectations!

How was your bank holiday?

Thanks, as always, for reading! x